William Loughborough wrote:
> I think you give too little credit to 8-year-olds. They are likelier to
> find moral/ethical grounds for making their projects accessible to their
> aging grandparents
If the grandparents need the help, of course. The question is whether
they should be expected to do this even if their grandparents eyesight
(or hearing, depending on the project, etc) is fine.
> After all, the entire HTML 5 project is a completely unnecessary
> exercise since XHTML furnishes all the sand-box needed to make a markup
> language be whatever anyone (even without the imprimateur of a W3C
> Working Group) can do. Since XML freed the creation of languages from
> its imprisonment in an academic ivory tower, we don't need yet another
> hierarchically-based group to tell us what to do.
Indeed. What's needed is not a way for authors to create new languages
but a way for rendering agents to agree on how to render said language.
That's what HTML5 is really trying to do. The new language features
are a nice side-effect, allowed by the fact that UAs have agreed, in
principle, to implement things as specified by the HTML5.
> If you think it not ethically-supported to have tools/procedures to make
> the Web universally accessible
You're twisting what I said, and I urge you to reread what I actually
wrote. I said it's not ethically supported to require all authors to
make their content accessible to all. Implied in that, and I should
have made it clear, is "given the current and near-term-expected state
of authoring tools".
Having more tools to automate accessible authoring is a great idea, and
the language should facilitate construction of such tools if it can.
> frustrated by the continuation of a filibuster by those whose
> moral/ethical imperatives diverge from yours.
Yes, I've gathered that there is this divergence. I seem to care a lot
more about the "anyone can publish" aspects of the web than some people
seem to, for example.
-Boris